FUTURES 326 



faults, which are rare, excepted), unless it develops that delivery is 

 unnecessary. 



How Deliveries are Made. Deliveries on contracts for future 

 delivery of grain, flaxseed and provisions entered into on the Chicago 

 Board of Trade, are made by warehouse receipts for the commodities 

 in warehouses declared "regular" by the Board. Deliveries of grain 

 and flaxseed are made in lots of 5,000 bushels (except a few in wheat 

 and flax in 1,000-bushel lots), provisions in lots of 250 packages and 

 50,000 pounds. 



All contracts upon which delivery is unnecessary are eliminated as 

 fast as they are discovered, so that when the month of delivery arrives, 

 it finds only the contracts open upon which delivery must be made. 

 Sellers begin to deliver the commodities on the first business day of 

 the month at 8 130 A. M., and oftentimes deliveries are very frequent 

 throughout the month. 



Warehouse receipts deliverable on the contracts are negotiable and 

 great care is necessary to prevent their loss. If it were not for the 

 manner in which the deliveries are made, the parties to the contracts 

 would be subjected to great loss and annoyance by reason of lost or 

 misplaced warehouse receipts and unnecessary clerical expense. 



Experience and necessity have developed an almost perfect system 

 of delivery, which eliminates all danger of loss of warehouse receipts 

 and simplifies the work. At 8:30 A. M. on the first business day of 

 each month, deliveries are made by notice on the Exchange Hall of 

 the Board of Trade. Every party having grain, provision, or flaxseed 

 contracts open for that month must be represented. Those traders 

 having commodities to deliver hold the receipts in their offices, but 

 they hand notices to the parties to whom they have made sales, noti- 

 fying them to call and pay for the property and get the warehouse 

 receipts. The party receiving the notice either holds the notice and 

 sends a certified check to the party making the delivery, who then 

 turns over the warehouse receipts to him, or if he has a contract of 

 sale with some other member, he papses the notice by endorsement to 

 the third party, who can, in turn, do the same thing; so that a notice 

 of delivery may go through twenty-five or thirty hands, until it finally 

 reaches a party who, for some reason, desires possession of the com- 

 modity. This last party then pays for it and all the intermediate par- 

 ties settle by receiving or paying the differences between the con- 

 tract prices — in other words, the profits and losses in the trades. 



This system of delivery saves the paying out ahd collecting by 

 each party of the full value of the commodity delivered, as well as the 



